After the box office failure of the first film, a sequel was ultimately shelved. Once the film hit the rental outlets, it become a cult hit and the possibility of making some cheap direct to video films to cash in were set into motion. Coming out nearly seven years after the first film is... this.

Starship Troopers 2 stars a fairly unknown cast of characters all of which have nothing to do with the first film. A small group of soldiers - for whatever reason I'm not even sure - decide to take on the bugs on a random planet when they realize there are simply too many of them. They quickly retreat to an old Federation base where they quickly meet a man named Dax (Richard Burgi) who is being held for killing the previous General. The crew soon begins to realize something is amiss with a new set of characters that have stumbled upon the base and the killing begins.

After watching the movie, I really think this film at one point was a simple slasher film with an Invasion of the Body Snatchers type plot and then someone came by and threw some money at them and told them to turn it into a Starship Troopers sequel. The first act deals with the infantry battling the bugs - just like how it should be - and then, all of the sudden, they decide to hold up inside of some sort of tower that resembles a silo and the 'infected' start killing the normal folk. Where are the bugs? Oh, they can't come over to play because of some sort of electrical fence keeping them back. I thought this was supposed to be a Starship Troopers film, not Jason X!

The only returning actor to the sequel is Brenda Strong. In the first film she played Captain Deladier who was killed when her space ship blew up... but for some reason, they liked her enough to bring her back as an entirely new character Sergeant Dede Rake. In this film she plays a gun-toting, cigar licking bad ass and actually has a purpose. For me, she will always be Sue Ellen Mischke from “Seinfeld”, but at least they brought back on of the better acting characters instead of Jake Busey.

Skip this film. Please. It calls itself Starship Trooper 2, but in reality it’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers in a cheap Halloween costume. Even if you enjoyed the first film this one does not even come close to it.

.::SPECIAL FEATURES::.

All Special Features are presented in SD.

Commentary with Director, Writer and Producer - What a dreck. They seem just as bored to be talking about the film as I am for having to watch it again.

Inside the Federation (30:04) - A good making of featurette where it goes into nearly everything from the film including some of the special effects, character development and of course, multiple clips per minute of the film.

From Green Screen to Silver Screen (9:06) - A clip show of some sketches of scenes that are later turned into the real deal.

BD-Live - After it took five minutes to actually load, I was greeted with the same type of BD-Live materials I have seen before. A quick glimpse of future Sony Blu-ray catalog titles as well as some downloadable trailers.

.::AUDIO & VIDEO::.

Starship Troopers 2 is presented in 1.78:1 Aspect Ratio on a 25GB Disc. This film was originally released as a direct to DVD film and it shows here. Picture quality is extremely poor with some scenes almost unwatchable. A thick layer of grain is present on nearly every shot (with the odd exception of the last scene back on Planet Earth). While I don't have the DVD for comparisons sake, the quality here could easily be mistaken for watching the DVD simply upconverted.

Sony has included both an English and French Dolby 5.1 TrueHD track. While the first film sounded great, this one is a big step down (obviously since it was made for roughly $5 million dollars). While the action scenes sounded great, the film simply has too many dialog scenes which sound muffled.

.::OVERALL::.

The best advice I can give you is skip it. It’s a poor sequel and doesn't even feel like a Starship Troopers film. With poor picture quality and audio quality mixed with only a few special features this film is better off forgotten. It should be noted this film is only available in the Starship Troopers 3-pack.